But as a society, people of all political stripes are hyper-obsessed with wombs. No matter what decision a woman makes -- to have children, to start a family later in life, or to not have kids at all -- she is likely to be scrutinized and judged.

The decision to have a child or not is a private one, but it takes place, in America, in a culture that often equates womanhood with motherhood. Any national discussion about the struggle to reconcile womanhood with modernity tends to begin and end with one subject: parenting. If you're a woman who's not in the mommy trenches, more often than not you're excluded from the discussion. But being sidelined doesn't exempt childless women from being scolded.

As author Lauren Sandler points out, we're raised to believe that becoming a mother is a social imperative. But recent generations have also been raised to want an education and a career. It creates a conflict somewhere in our 30s in which "[w]ithout independence, we’re failures. With it, we’re selfish." So, like everything else about being a woman, you're damned if you do, damned if you don't.

When people ask me, do you have children and I say no, they always look at me then and say, "Oh, I'm sorry." As if like there's something like physically wrong with me and I'm unable to have children or I'm a poor, sad, selfish person and please go away. [Note: Watch the whole segment below.]

On the flip side, women who do have children are told that they’re contributing to overpopulation and therefore hurting the environment. Worse, women are told they need to pay the motherhood penalty -- that is, accept the consequence that motherhood means sacrificing their careers. Never mind that men aren't victims of pregnancy discrimination or made to feel like they must choose between family or career.